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Estimated time of infection vs. confirmed infections

Following the ideas from Tomas Pueyo's Medium post "Coronavirus: Why You Must Act Now" [1], we assume the average time from infection to death at 23 days [2]. The data is pulled from the COVID-19 Data Repository by Johns Hopkins CSSE [3] every hour. Countries with a minimnum of 1000 confirmed cases and 40 confirmed deaths are included in this analysis.

The time from infection to death is equal to the incubation period plus the time from symptoms to death. This is used to estimate the time of the infections that lead to the observed deaths. We take the last fatality rate per country (total_cases/total_deaths) to estimate the number of infections that are responsible for the observed deaths.

In the figures below, you can observe successive waves of infections (dashed), detections (black) and deaths (red) for each country. The upper panel shows the absolute number of events. The dashed lines show the estimated number of infections. The lower panel shows the normalized number of events. Here the temporal delay between the waves and the relative change between each other can be observed.

[1] https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca

[2] https://github.com/midas-network/COVID-19/tree/master/parameter_estimates/2019_novel_coronavirus

[3] https://github.com/CSSEGISandData/COVID-19/tree/master/csse_covid_19_data/csse_covid_19_time_series

US
Brazil
India
Mexico
United Kingdom
Italy
France
Russia
Iran
Spain
Colombia
Germany
Argentina
Peru
South Africa
Poland
Indonesia
Turkey
Ukraine
Belgium
Canada
Chile
Romania
Ecuador
Czechia
Iraq
Netherlands
Hungary
Pakistan
Sweden
Philippines
Bolivia
Switzerland
Egypt
Bulgaria
Portugal
Morocco
Bangladesh
Austria
Saudi Arabia
Tunisia
Greece
Guatemala
Panama
China
Croatia
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Japan
Jordan
Israel
Serbia
Honduras
Slovakia
Moldova
Slovenia
Azerbaijan
Armenia
Burma
Kazakhstan
Georgia
Algeria
North Macedonia
Ireland
Paraguay
Dominican Republic
Costa Rica
Lithuania
Afghanistan
Ethiopia
Nepal
Lebanon
Kenya
West Bank and Gaza
Denmark
Libya
Sudan
Belarus
Oman
Kyrgyzstan
El Salvador
Nigeria
Kosovo
Albania
South Korea
Venezuela
Kuwait
Latvia
Australia
Syria
Montenegro
United Arab Emirates
Zimbabwe
Congo (Kinshasa)
Uzbekistan
Finland
Malaysia
Luxembourg
Zambia
Norway
Senegal
Cameroon
Angola
Mauritania
Bahrain
Ghana
Eswatini
Jamaica
Estonia
Uganda
Uruguay
Belize
Namibia
Madagascar
Sri Lanka
Qatar
Haiti
Malta
Mozambique
Cyprus
Cuba
Cote d'Ivoire
Rwanda
Cabo Verde

Ahead of the curve

Some countries start testing the population earlier in the outbreak than others. The time delay between the wave of deaths and the wave of confirmed cases is indicative for how early a country is detecting new cases ahead of the increase of deaths. Earlier detection means a better chances for successful isolation of an infected person and treatment of the desease.

We measure the distance of the maximum of cumulative deaths and new deaths to the number of infections to estimate the progression of the infection across countries.

If, in the early phase of the infection wave, the number of deaths rises faster than the number of confirmed cases, the distance drops, indicating that

A comparison of countries with respect to their mean time for reponse is presented below.

To determine the above values, we plot the number of confirmed cases (solid black lines) and the number of deaths (dashed black lines). From this, we measure the distance of the day of maximum deaths (dashed red lines) to the day of confirmed cases at this y-value.

The distance is indicative for how fast the humber of confirmed cases increases comapred to the increase of the number of deaths.

US
Brazil
India
Mexico
United Kingdom
Italy
France
Russia
Iran
Spain
Colombia
Germany
Argentina
Peru
South Africa
Poland
Indonesia
Turkey
Ukraine
Belgium
Canada
Chile
Romania
Ecuador
Czechia
Iraq
Netherlands
Hungary
Pakistan
Sweden
Philippines
Bolivia
Switzerland
Egypt
Bulgaria
Portugal
Morocco
Bangladesh
Austria
Saudi Arabia
Tunisia
Greece
Guatemala
Panama
China
Croatia
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Japan
Jordan
Israel
Serbia
Honduras
Slovakia
Moldova
Slovenia
Azerbaijan
Armenia
Burma
Kazakhstan
Georgia
Algeria
North Macedonia
Ireland
Paraguay
Dominican Republic
Costa Rica
Lithuania
Afghanistan
Ethiopia
Nepal
Lebanon
Kenya
West Bank and Gaza
Denmark
Libya
Sudan
Belarus
Oman
Kyrgyzstan
El Salvador
Nigeria
Kosovo
Albania
South Korea
Venezuela
Kuwait
Latvia
Australia
Syria
Montenegro
United Arab Emirates
Zimbabwe
Congo (Kinshasa)
Uzbekistan
Finland
Malaysia
Luxembourg
Zambia
Norway
Senegal
Cameroon
Angola
Mauritania
Bahrain
Ghana
Eswatini
Jamaica
Estonia
Uganda
Uruguay
Belize
Namibia
Madagascar
Sri Lanka
Qatar
Haiti
Malta
Mozambique
Cyprus
Cuba
Cote d'Ivoire
Rwanda
Cabo Verde